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Is blended learning an innovation to improve schools?The current education system is very old and needs a disruptive innovation. A new book "Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools" by education experts Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker states the need to update our system and serves as a design guide to effectively embrace and implement blended learning.
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Cornell University sees momentum in MOOCSAmong many universities that are expanding their MOOC courses in 2015, Cornell adds four new MOOC courses to its list based on the success of the MOOCS offered in spring 2014. The courses in spring have served more than 55,000 people worldwide they are still available for viewing.
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Tuition costs are rising faster for the poorest AmericansThe net prices charged for the lowest-income students, after discounts and financial aid, continue to rise faster on average than the net prices charged for the higher-income ones, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Universities and colleges concede that financial aid based on merit, as opposed to need, is increasingly important to attract academically talented students. The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank points out that there are powerful incentives for universities to avoid admitting and enrolling low-income students.
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Platform for job recruitmentFrench startup Agorize offers a platform that links corporates with start-up companies and student communities. It relies on open innovation and community crowdsourcing to let companies gather data on new ideas and ventures. Organizations get better recommendations and data compared to the solutions offered by anonymized marketing survey. Participants gain experience and build a professional network and business relations. Students from 2000 universities actively participate with Agorize, who are rewarded with jobs by its clients like Google, Microsoft and Bank of America.
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Reality of college completion ratesOver the past 20 years in the US, more than 31 million students have enrolled in college and left without receiving a degree or certificate. 12 percent of the students, who enrolled for college, have at least two years' worth of progress. In order to improve the completion rate, policymakers need to address the roadblocks by options such as enabling transfer of college credits and flexible federal financial aid regulations.
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Changing Educational ParadigmsMOOC-based degrees, competency-based education, formalization of learning and regulatory reform are factors that bring fundamental change to the status quo in educational practice. The scalability of large-enrollment online degree programs is one of the success indicators of MOOC and it can become the alternative to traditional degrees by gaining employer acceptance. Competency-based education improves the alignment between program curricula and employable skills. Qualifications frameworks are being built as standards that define the knowledge and skills that a credential should represent. Radical alternatives to regulatory reforms like accreditation, regulations for distance education, and federal financial aid eligibility are employed to kindle innovation.
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MOOC & Strategy: NIH grants and the virtual (world) medical schoolUSA is now taking steps to fund open online resources for medical education, which can be utilized in future to create a virtual global medical school curriculum for health professions and pre-medical education equal to the best in the world. NIH is welcoming a new era of development of big data courses and open educational resources that will be available to the whole world for free.
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Humanitarian aid workers get free high quality trainingDisasterReady.org, a signature program of the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation, is an online training platform that provides courses and tools covering all aspects of humanitarian aid and disaster relief. The courses are designed to meet foundational and advanced training and the skill set required for an aid worker on the ground.
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Coursera partners with Brazil's top universitiesCoursera partners with the Brazilian universities to offer Portuguese courses. Teaming up with the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), it will develop courses in high-demand topics from entrepreneurship to finance.
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EdX opens MOOCs for High SchoolersEdX has announced 26 free MOOC courses for High Schoolers covering Advanced Placement courses with material spanning the subjects of Science, Mathematics, English, and History. This first venture in to the K-12 arena is considered an attempt to alleviate the alarming gap between high school students' eligibility and their preparedness for getting into college.